How Pinteresting Bulletin Boards

Hi friends!  I am starting to get my act together in my classroom, now I just have to get my program in order, quick smart as it is due this coming Friday!!!!   In the meantime they have taken down my old chalkboard and replaced it with a much smaller whiteboard which has left me some extra wall space to use for displays, which leads me into this weeks How Pinteresting post.  I have been scouring Pinterest to find some great ideas for this space, and I thought I would share them with you!

This is so great to have up as a year round board to remind students of the values and skills we need to become life long learners.

This would be quite topical at the moment as we move into Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere

What a great way to instill good reading habits!

Love having a tree in my classroom.

I usually have this as seperate anchor charts but I really like this idea.

I hope you have found some bulletin board Pinspiration, I am still tossing up what I am going to use the space for but will definitely be taking a pic of it when I am finished!  

Team Teaching Tuesday linky

I am linking up with Stephanie at Falling into First for her first Team Teaching Tuesday linky.
I love the idea of sharing ideas from around the world on a particular topic.



The topic this week is classroom rules and what yours are in your classroom.  This past year I revamped my rules (just the display)  Here are mine!

I organise them under Responsible, Respect and Safe

Responsible

Always ask before you leave the classroom

Respect

Always put your hand up to talk

Use kind words and friendly voices

Safe

Always walk in the classroom

Responsible, Respect and Safe

Keep hands, feet and objects to yourself

I like to use both a broad spectrum and then take it down to specifics so that the littles who don't understand words like responsible or respect have an example to guide them.

I gave these a remake to match my apple and gingham theme I had in my room this last semester, you can see the post here for the makeover and if you would like a copy of your own you can get them here for FREE!

You can link up with Stephanie by clicking on the button below and tell us all about the rules in your classroom.

Christmas boards

I have started to put up our Christmas display boards.  I started with a tree and we are adding decorations to it  as we continue our Christmas craft.  I have also been using Shanyn's Christmas packet for literacy and maths blocks. (Get your copy here).

One of the items we used this week from Shanyn's pack was Festive Words . We brainstormed words that we might use in our Christmas writing and I wrote it on to a piece of poster card, then the students each chose 2 words and either used a dictionary to find the definition or wrote down what they KNEW to be the correct definition.  They then had to write a sentence for each word.  We have been focussing on how to make our sentences more interesting so they really had to think about having adjectives, verbs and making sure it made sense.  I think they look great!

(Not all of them are finished yet)

We have also completed my Candy Cane Craftivity which includes an acrostic poem, they LOVED this activity and were very happy with the end result.  (Get your FREE copy here.)

It looks a bit bare at the moment, more craft to come to fill up the space....stay tuned.

 For the star on the Christmas tree I cut out a template and each student used their thumb print to put some yellow paint on it, I am thinking about adding some glitter on Monday.  The kiddos all let out an "Awwww" when I pinned the start to the top of the tree.  Magic!  I am so happy we get to share the magic of Christmas with our students.

I am having a great time checking out all the Christmas craft on other blog as well, so make sure you post pics!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend and if you are in Queensland....enjoy your last week with your students.  

Monday Made It!

I am linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for this weeks Monday Made It!
I have decided to revamp my rules posters for this weeks Monday Made It.  It is something that has been on my to do list for a while now.
Here is the before pic


Here is how I updated them.
First I created a new format with an apple theme, here is a sample of what they look like

I used graphics from Mel at From the Pond, the apple graphic is one I created and the font is a standard one on Microsoft, Segoe and one from Kevin and Amanda Carrington (?)  On my old rules I just had the "negotiated" rules that I would discuss at the beginning of the year with the students.  After being part of a PBS school I decided to add the headings RESPECT, RESPONSIBLE, SAFE to each rule depending on what category they came under.  I think is important for students to see the reason why we have rules in the class and this is a reminder when we refer to them throughout the year.

Once I printed them off I glued them onto coloured paper and laminated them.

Then I lined them up in the order I wanted them to hang

I used red gingham ribbon to join them using a hot glue gun.

Then I used the apple green cord ribbon to make a hanger

This is how they turned out. (I had to hang it on my daughters wardrobe door to take this pic.)

Now it 's your turn to link up!

FREE Apple Theme CAFE headers

This year I have started using an apple theme in my classroom and am trying to incorporate it in most aspects of the year.  So I had to create new CAFE headers, you can find them at my TpT store for FREE!

Here's a quick peek!

I also included my apple numbers that I use to organise my groups.  I am also working on labels for Working on Words and Working on Writing

Flowery recommendations

I just wanted to quickly update about my apple pin board.  As you know I have used the grab line "Bite into a Book" to entice my kids to read and write about their reading.  I have been so impressed with how my kids have jumped feet first into recommending books.  To begin I modeled how to write a recommendation and kept it pretty simple as many of my kids are reluctant writers and I didn't want to overwhelm them.  Here are a few pics to show how they look so far.

This is the one I modeled and the petals show the students who read the book from my recommendation. They write their name and put a tick if they liked the book and a x if they didn't.

This is a student written recommendation.  I love that she used the word "vibrant" to describe the book!

This is another student recommendation.  I modelled to the students reading a recommendation and then reading a book.  I explicitly said I was reading the book because she had said the illustrations were "bumpy".  The illustrations were done in water colour and did indeed look bumpy!

This is the pinboard so far and I am looking forward to seeing our garden grow throughout the rest of the term.  I have loved seeing my kids spontaneously writing after reading and really thinking about why the liked/disliked a book.  You can see the post I wrote when I was setting this board up here.



 

Apple pin board display

I finally got into school today and spent most of the day setting up my board and I am happy to share the photo of how it looks so far.....

Oh no, just realised my cloud is saggy.

My flowers are empty stalks at the moment because the kids are going to be turning these into flowery book recommendations.
These are the proformas they will fill out and they will become the centre of the flower.  This will be a booklet that will be folded to make one circle.  When another child reads the book based on the recommendation they will write their name on a petal and add it to the flower, so we will see which books are the most popular in our classroom.

This will be the front cover

This is the inside and will be folded in half.

I put cellophane over the blue poster paper for the sky to cover the joins.  I made the apples from coloured paper rather than print them to save on ink and then laminated them.  The green part of the tree is made from netting material and I stuck a rough velcro dot on the wall and the net material sticks to it, I stuck the apple on in the same way.  The only thing I didn't get done today is to put up my sign that says "Bite into a Book",
this will relate to my book display in the library corner.   The tree actually looks more textured in teal life because I folded and scrunched the material to give it a 3D design.  So the only thing left for me to do is to put up the rest of my apples!